Waiting for the next Watergate

Watergate led to the biggest overhaul of campaign finance law in the past century. Outrage over donors sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom and Enron influence peddling helped spur the 2002 McCain-Feingold overhaul. And the Jack Abramoff affair got Congress to act quickly on lobbying and ethics reform.

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But the explosion of campaign spending, super PACs and political nonprofits hasn’t been enough for campaign finance watchdogs to get momentum on Capitol Hill. They are brimming with ambitious proposals to curtail the influence of money in politics, end the role of corporations in the political process, force more disclosure on freewheeling outside groups and rein in the activities of Beltway lobbyists.

What they’re missing: a messy scandal to gin up public outrage and embarrass Congress into acting.

“It always takes a scandal in order to get Congress to reform itself,” said former Rep. Marty Meehan — a Massachusetts Democrat and a veteran of the 2002 campaign finance fight.

“One of the jobs of the reform community is to identify the problems in the system as it stands and to try to create good policy proposals — and then wait for the scandal,” said Lisa Gilbert, director of the Congress Watch division at the pro-reform group Public Citizen.

While voters have long complained about the role of money in politics and give lobbyists low marks, it often takes a dramatic and lurid political scandal to really galvanize public outrage — like “someone hiding bricks of gold in the freezer. That kind of moment when the public is just that shocked,” mused Gilbert.

There are a half-dozen bills currently floating around Congress to overhaul the current system and rein in spending, influence peddling and megadonors.

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) has proposed a constitutional amendment to undo the 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United and allow Congress to regulate the flow of political cash. Nearly 50 Senate Democrats have have signed on and Majority Leader Harry Reid has vowed to bring the proposal to the floor. But the measure has little chance of passing and is, in part, meant to support Democratic talking points on the Koch brothers and big money spending.

Senate Democrats have reintroduced the long-stalled DISCLOSE Act that would bring more transparency into the campaign finance system. And several House Democrats have floated proposals that would create a voluntary system of public financing for congressional campaigns.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has proposed two bills this year that would reform the lobbying profession from top to bottom. His bill proposes to ban members from lobbying for life, increase the amount of disclosure and to ban members from asking lobbyists for cash while Congress is in session.

“Something needs to change, and it shouldn’t take another scandal. The incredibly frustrating dysfunction should be motivation enough for us to make significant changes,” said Bennet.

The entire history of campaign finance and lobbying regulation is tied up in the ebb and flow of scandal.

The first campaign finance law ever written — the Tillman Act of 1907 — came after Theodore Roosevelt faced embarrassing questions about which corporations funded his 1904 campaign.

Forty years ago this month, Richard Nixon’s resignation following the Watergate scandal convinced Congress to act on getting money out of politics. An independent agency, the Federal Election Commission, was created in 1974 to enforce new campaign finance laws. Strict new restrictions on what donors could give were put in place. And Congress created a public financing system for presidential elections to help curb the influence of money in politics.